


The Third Time

by ArtsyAfrodite



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gallavich, Gallavich AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 13:32:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1032261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtsyAfrodite/pseuds/ArtsyAfrodite
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He never fumbled with epiphanies, but right in that moment, Mickey found himself desperately grabbing at the one that lingered in the space between him and Ian, and suddenly the distance between them on the rooftop seemed like miles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Third Time

The first time Mickey hears it, his mom says it.  It was his eighth birthday and she had bought him a carrot cake decorated in pretty white frosting, a big orange carrot made of icing in the middle.  It was his favorite and she wasn’t high.  _Surprise, surprise._   She placed the cake on the kitchen table, lighting the candle shaped like the number “8” with the match she subsequently lit her cigarette with.  Mickey remembers wincing as ashes from the nicotine fell onto the white frosting as his mom sang happy birthday, her voice scratchy and Mandy clinging tightly to her ripped, white jeans.  She scratched aimlessly at the needle marks in her arms as she tried her best to push down any hunger not for cake and celebratory singing for the occasion.  Terry was nowhere to be found, the only remnants of him a few empty pipes on the coffee table and the penetrating stench of methamphetamines. 

Mickey remembers his mom’s lipstick being a bright red and her left cheek a bluish-purple, courtesy of Terry’s right fist.  He thought about how the lipstick stained the white of the cigarette, the way his dad’s fist stained his mom’s pale cheek, so there was no way the cake would be exempt amongst all of the bruises, colors, and grime.  Even his mom’s white jeans were stained with dirt, the same way his own shirt and face were decorated with smudges.  Everything in their home was a potential canvas, shitty circumstances the brush.  Although creatively stifled, at least they all matched.

But despite the choking scent of smoke, spending five minutes scraping off the parts of the frosting with cigarette ash, and everything just being stained, Mickey remembers the first time those words hit his ears.  His mom had handed him his gift, a secondhand Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles t-shirt she had gotten from the Salvation Army.  It smelled stale and was wrapped sloppily in left-over Christmas wrapping paper despite it being March.  He immediately slipped the shirt over his black hair, his mom leaning in to kiss him on his forehead.  She had another lit cigarette in her mouth and ashes had fallen onto his shirt as she leaned over him, ruffling his hair.  Mickey frowned as he looked up at his mother, his eyebrows furrowed and lips in a pout, because it was cigarette ash on yet something else and although the shirt wasn’t new, it was new to him.  “My little Michael,” she started as she stubbed her cigarette out in the ashtray, “Don’t frown so much.  Gives you wrinkles.”  Then just as he was about to turn away, she said it in the sweetest voice, at least as sweet as vocal cords damaged from too much cigarette smoke and meth could get, and for the first time Mickey got this awful, yet wonderful pulling in his chest.

The feeling was awful, maybe because his mom would never say it again before she overdosed – a foreshadowing perhaps.  It was wonderful, maybe because she had said it and he would know that familiar feeling the next time he heard it.

***

The second time Mickey hears it, Mandy says it.  He was sixteen and Mandy was fourteen, the two of them out and about with people whom she called her friends and who Mickey didn’t give a fuck about.  It was Mandy’s birthday this time around and she had begged him to come out with them saying, “It’ll be fun.”  Mickey rolled his ice-blue eyes at his sister’s fake excitement for his company – she knew he could get the good weed so having him come along was more for a guaranteed high, which was fine with Mickey.  Maybe he could get a guaranteed blow job from one of her stupid friends by the end of the night.  The tradeoff was fair.

He remembers Mandy’s voice being two octaves higher with these so called friends, all of them crowding around her as they house hopped.  Mickey barely remembered any of the adolescent loud mouths, most of them drunken, blurred visions, but he did remember one kid in particular – a Gallagher he thought.  His red hair should have been illegal and those freckles deemed a hazard.  He was slightly scrawny and his hair hung over his forehead, his grin so smug and in-your-face and… _shit_ …fucking infectious.  Mickey didn’t understand why, but the red head made it a point to grin at him every chance he got, his green eyes hooded and filled with things Mickey didn’t dare to decipher but remained curious about nonetheless.  He wasn’t sure if he was angry or ~~aroused~~ confused, so he dismissed the weird glances and blamed it on too much alcohol and the good weed.   

They ended up back at the Milkovich house, all of them too high and too drunk to have a care in the world.  Terry and his brothers were out on a run for the next few days, so the place was theirs and all hell could have broken loose and Mickey wouldn’t have cared or noticed, because the way Gallagher was looking at him while they crashed on the couch sent sensations though him that he didn’t want but needed at the same time.  Such and too many contradictions were Mickey’s life.  _“Fuck it,”_ he thought.  One more wouldn’t make a difference.

Then Mandy began to blast this awful pop, or dub step, or whatever the fuck type of song was popular at the moment, grabbing Gallagher off of the couch and pulling him to dance in the mess of shitfaced teenagers.  They all looked ridiculous.  Except – the way Gallagher was moving his hips, so suggestive and pressing into the back of some ditzy blonde chick, all the while giving Mickey _that look_ , was more than enough make him rethink the ridiculousness of it all.  And now Gallagher was biting his lip, and, _fuck_ , Mickey found himself biting his in return, so he jumped up and retired to his room for the night.  He blamed his reaction on the familiar culprit, too much alcohol and that good weed.

Mickey’s sprawled out on his bed now, and a few minutes later, there’s a knock at his bedroom door.  He remembers looking up and seeing nothing but red, and he groaned within himself because _why the fuck was Gallagher coming into his room?_   “Gotta use to bathroom,” he said nonchalantly, and Mickey cursed the asshole that designed this house, making the only bathroom in his room.  He nodded his head in the direction of the bathroom, giving the Gallagher kid the go ahead.  A few minutes later, with his eyes closed, Mickey felt his bed dip from new weight, and as he opened one eye, there’s Gallagher, sitting there so matter-of-factly like he’s fucking welcome.  “Got a cigarette?” he asked, still so nonchalant, so Mickey handed him one with a light.  The red head inhaled deep, muttering a low “Thanks,” through the smoke.  But he wasn’t leaving. 

Mickey glanced up at him, and now Gallagher is staring not at him, but right through him, a smirk tugging at the corners of his mouth.  _Fuck._   Mickey began to feel a tent in his pants rising because now Gallagher was licking his lips like he _knew_ and fuck all if Mickey didn’t kind of wish he’d make a move – which he did.  He makes his eyebrows dance and darts his blue eyes to his pants zipper and before he knows it, Gallagher is unzipping his jeans almost desperately, pulling them down with his boxers in one swift motion.  He takes all of Mickey into his mouth, sucking all the way down to the base, making it look so effortless, and Mickey throws his head back, eyes rolling to the back of his head.  His mouth is wet and warm around Mickey’s dick, and he’s _so close_ , his muscles tightening and his toes curling in his boots.  Before he knows it, he’s blowing his load into Gallagher’s mouth and he swallows _all of it_. He sits up, a lazy smile on his lips, and he begins to lean forward.  “Kiss me and I’ll cut your fucking tongue out,”Mickey says as he zips his pants.  Gallagher simply shrugs, clearly not fazed.

Mandy’s then laughing hysterically outside his bedroom door, and shit, it sounded like she was about to come in – which she does.  “Fuck! Hide!” Mickey yelled at Gallagher as he pushed him off of his bed.  The red head fell to the floor and rolled under his bed, some soldier type shit, right before Mandy burst into his room.  She was drunk off her ass and jumped on Mickey’s bed like she was six again.  He was about to tell her to _“get the fuck out,”_ but then she threw her arms around his neck.  “Thank you for my gift!” she yelled excitedly, and Mickey remembered he had left an iPod he’d stolen on her bed.  Then she said it unexpectedly, her arms tight around his neck where her nose was buried, and Mickey got that familiar pulling in his chest.  He wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol, or if he was just so blissed out from the best blow job he had ever gotten, but the feeling was there, and Mickey had recognized it.

***

The third time Mickey hears it, Ian says it.  _Ian._   Because that’s who he is to him now, no longer the scrawny Gallagher kid from four years ago, but a young man, definitely more filled out and so much taller than he was back then.  Even though he had grown over the years, his red hair, in a buzz cut now, and his green eyes, were still just as vibrant as the first day he’d met him – a vibrancy he knew long before the night of Mandy’s birthday.  He dreams about them, seeing splashes of crimson and jade mixed in a map of pale skin Mickey knew all too well and navigated more times than he could count.  Little did he know that the fourteen-year-old boy with freckles, less visible now but still there, would become more than a warm mouth to him.  He was in his skin now, and no matter how hard Mickey would scrub at it in the shower, too ashamed of the scent the red head always left on him, _always,_ Ian would still be there and maybe Mickey was secretly glad that his smell was still trapped beneath his layers – probably always would be.

Mickey remembers the fighting.  There were no punches thrown or head butts seeking out to break noses, rather, there were _words._   Physical pain was something he and Ian definitely had their fair share of together over the years, the proof in Ian’s scar here, Mickey’s scar there.  They had an even bigger fair share of scares and abuse, lyrics of _“She’s gonna fuck the faggot outta ya kid,”_ their own twisted soundtrack to a horrific masterpiece of drying blood painted Basquiat style on skin.  Mickey’s used to his life being like fucked up art, but the words thrown out of mouths that night, _the night_ , hit like daggers held over a fire until the metal turned to a glowing amber.  There are only pieces left in Mickey’s memory of what they were actually fighting about, swimming around in his mind like debris from a shipwreck.  Because that’s what he and Ian were doomed to be – a shipwreck.  However, Mickey knew that there was nothing Ian would rather do more, than to still raise the sails high in hopes that the winds of what they had would carry them further from the white squall.  Over the past four years, it did anything but.  So they were drowning in all the bullshit. 

He remembers Ian yelling something about _“enlisting”_ and _“fighting for his country was easier than fighting for them.”_  There was never a time Mickey wished the pain was from a punch to the face or stomach, because those words certainly drew more than blood from his nose or the wind from his gut ever would.  He never fumbled with epiphanies, but right in that moment, Mickey found himself desperately grabbing at the one that lingered in the space between him and Ian, and suddenly the distance between them on the rooftop seemed like miles.  The thought of Ian ~~running~~ leaving to possibly die in a foreign country killed something inside Mickey he never realized had life – his feelings.  They were awful and amazing at the same time, a familiar contradiction that couldn’t be any sweeter and pretty damn close to…  If anything, Mickey thought it before he heard it, and just when he was about to say _‘Fuck it all,’_ the only thing that slipped past his lips were, “don’t” and “just…”,the words falling sloppily to the cement floor.  Ian stood flat and heavy-footed next to the ROTC obstacle course tires, letting out a skeptical, “Don’t what?”  And suddenly the course he used as practice seemed so final. Don’t what?  Mickey didn’t know.  Or did he?  _Don’t go, just stay._  

Ian turned to walk away, but Mickey couldn’t have that.  _Don’t be a pussy._ And before he knew it, his feet were moving faster than he could think, and he was on Ian’s heels within seconds.  Mickey doesn’t touch people unless it’s with extreme force, usually the sole purpose being to break faces in fights.  No, he never touched people, not like _that_ , but he _touched_ Ian, gently gripping his forearm.  There was care behind the contact.  Ian tried pulling away, and Mickey only gripped tighter, pulling him in, only for the red head to grab him by his shirt collar yelling at him to get the fuck off.Mickey only grabbed Ian’s shirt in return, spitting out his own screams of, _“Why the fuck do you always do this?!”_ and _“I don’t understand why you make it so hard for me.”_ It was then Ian’s eyes seemed to sink into Mickey’s, and faster than his heart could skip a beat he said it, and Mickey didn’t know if what he heard was in his mind or reality.  The words penetrated his chest, sinking to the bottom of his stomach from the weight of each syllable.  “ _I love you,”_ Ian said, _“it’s because I love you.”_  

Mickey’s heard the words _‘I love you’_ before, the first time from his mom, and the second his sister.  But this was the third time and it was like the first, because he felt sensations run through him that he’d never felt before. 

He remembers inadvertently asking, “How much?” before he could swallow the stupidity of the question.  He felt childish, like an eight-year-old boy once again.  But before he could waive away the question, Ian answered, “How many drops are in the ocean?”  And as gay as that sounded to Mickey, it was then he realized that even if they were doomed to be a shipwreck, at least they’d have the multitude of drops in the ocean in which he would gladly drown with Ian, because it was only love _._

If only Mickey could count all of the drops, he’d know in definite, infinite quantities.  But for the third time, at least he could _feel_ just how much it was. 

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one shot I wrote out of an idea I had about the first time Ian says, "I love you" to Mickey. How many times had he heard it before, if at all? What would it be like? It's AU, which some familiar things woven in there. The story is quite random and really, the ramblings of my mind, but nonetheless, I hope you enjoyed. Once again, thanks for reading. :)


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